


distance

by harinezumi_kun



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 23:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harinezumi_kun/pseuds/harinezumi_kun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>when ohno's scandal breaks, something in nino breaks, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	distance

**Author's Note:**

> written for the [arashi_on fundraiser](http://community.livejournal.com/arashi_on/3747412.html). the request was for an ohmiya fic inspired by Utada Hikaru's [Distance](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Y6CsnFw44), centered around ohno's scandal. sorry for the wait, and thank you for your patience m(_)m i think this might have taken a slightly different turn from the original prompt, but i hope you still like it (^^;;

_Just like that, Nino is on his back and Ohno is on top of him, shoving his tongue into Nino’s mouth, rocking his hips down in a rough rhythm. It’s sudden, clumsy, and too fast—frantic, almost—and this is not how Nino wants it to happen, but he’s been thinking about it, imagining it, almost since the first time he met Ohno and he doesn’t know if he will ever get another chance._

_But then, suddenly, Ohno is pulling back, breathing hard. His expression in the dim light of the hotel room is a mix of guilt and terror. He tries to crawl backwards off of Nino, but Nino’s got Ohno by his shirtfront and isn’t letting go._

_“Hey, wait, what—”_

_“Sorry,” Ohno stutters, “I didn’t—I was—what…what are we doing?”_

_Nino blinks at that, feeling like the answer is fairly obvious, but something in Ohno’s eyes is begging for reassurance. Nino says the first thing that comes to him._

_“It’s fine,” he murmurs, pulling Ohno back towards him. “It’s just—it’s just sex, right? No big deal.”_

_Ohno’s brow furrows, and something inscrutable flashes in his eyes. His breaths are slowing down, and for a moment, Nino thinks he’s going to run._

_But then Ohno nods, once, and drops back down on top of Nino in one swift, sinuous movement that leaves Nino gasping and grabbing at Ohno’s shoulders. There’s no more talking after that, just the rustle of clothes quickly removed, the slick sound of mouths meeting and moans lost in the middle._

_In the morning they have almost the same conversation. This time Ohno speaks his question to the back of Nino’s neck. They’re lying close, but not close enough to touch, curved into identical crescents. Nino thinks he can feel every inch of the distance between them like a needle against his flesh._

_“What is this?” Ohno asks quietly._

_“Nothing,” Nino says. “It’s just sex, Oh-chan. That’s all.”_

_A pause. He hears Ohno breathe out, feels the air wash across the skin between his shoulder blades._

_“Okay,” Ohno says._

*

* 

*

When Ohno’s scandal hits, it’s Sho who comes to talk to Nino about it, not Ohno. This puts Nino in a sour mood—well, sourer than he already was—because, for one, he doesn’t like that he apparently needs someone to come talk to him, and second, it should be Ohno.

Sho is doing that thing, the “we’re having a serious discussion” pose he does, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped together. Nino hates that.

“None of this is even—it happened years ago, you know that, right?” Sho says.

“I know.” Nino is sprawled across the greenroom sofa, with his cap pulled down over his face and his arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t move except to speak, and even then, just barely.

“So we need to support him,” Sho continues, sounding annoyed.

“I am,” Nino grumbles, turning a little further towards the back of the couch.

Sho sighs. “You’re sulking.”

“I’m tired.”

Sho clicks his tongue this time, and Nino hears him shifting around. When Sho speaks again, his voice is soft with concern.

“This is going to be really hard on him, Nino. And out of all of us, I think—I know—your support would mean the most to him.”

Nino snorts into the cushions. “Why, because we fuck occasionally?”

Sho breathes out slow, and Nino can tell he’s getting angry. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“Just that you and Satoshi-kun are—”

“Nothing,” Nino says, cutting Sho short, “we’re not anything.” And it’s easy to say, after so many years of telling everyone—including himself—that’s there’s nothing special between him and Ohno.

“Then why are you getting so worked up over a stupid tabloid scandal?”

“I told you,” Nino says again, “I’m just tired.”

“Dammit, Nino,” Sho says, half-sigh and half-growl. He stands, pauses, and Nino wonders if he will yell, almost wants him to, because then Nino could yell back. Eventually, though, he just hears Sho’s footsteps cross angrily to the door, and out. 

Nino lets out a slow breath, curls into himself a little tighter.

Only a few minutes later, he hears Aiba and Jun come in quietly. Aiba takes a seat at the end of the couch, lifting Nino’s legs and depositing them in his own lap to make room. Jun sits on the arm rest by Nino’s head, and for a time, no one says anything. It’s an easy silence, just the two of them giving Nino a chance to tell them to leave him alone if he wants. Although whether or not they would actually leave him alone is debatable. 

“You really pissed off Sho-chan,” Aiba says eventually, his tone conversational.

“So, you know, thanks for that,” Jun says. “On top of everything else.”

“This is turning out to be a really touching heart-to-heart,” Nino tells them.

Aiba carries on as if Nino hadn’t spoken. “But you’re not really the one who should be upset, you know.”

“You’re being selfish,” Jun says, more to the point.

Nino doesn’t have a reply to that.

“If you would just—” Aiba begins, but Ohno chooses that moment to shuffle into the greenroom. 

He must notice the way everything suddenly falls quiet when he enters, but apparently he’s beyond caring—he just continues over to his seat in front of the mirror and puts his head down. Normally, this is the part where Nino would go to him, invade his space, offer him the wordless comfort they are accustomed to sharing.

Instead, he carefully extracts himself from Aiba and leaves the room without a word.

*

The old rehearsal rooms down in the basement of the Jimusho are always empty nowadays, mostly just used for storage. But there’s one that still has a working piano in it, squirreled away amongst strange props whose original purpose is lost to time (giant bowling pins, a bicycle with a broken front wheel and a baby seat on the back, a basket of plastic fruit). The piano is still in tune for the most part, and Nino likes to come down here when he doesn’t want to be found.

He doesn’t turn the lights on, and the only illumination comes from the half-open door, filtered irregularly through the piles of props and stacks of chairs. For a while, Nino just sits on the piano bench, hands resting limply on the keys.

The pictures from the magazines flash through his head again, unbidden. Grainy black and white arms and legs, gritty and pixilated faces, more personal than anything in a magazine has any right to be. What Nino hates the most is how stupidly happy Ohno looks in all of them.

Finally, Nino’s arms rise up just slightly, his fingers curve and press down into the keys. He pushes slowly, too slowly for the piano to actually make any noise, but enough that he can feel the little jump of the hammer release beneath his fingertips, the faint _plunk_ of the felt heads falling back into place. He releases the keys, then presses again. This time, one long, thoughtful chord floats up on the dusty air, then another, and slowly, something like a song comes together. Nino starts to sing along without any real words, just “ah”s and “la”s, wobbly and rough against the piano’s harmony. He works the pedals in stocking feet—he took his shoes off by the door.

It’s stupid, it’s so stupid to be angry about this, because what Sho said is true. The pictures are old, dug up because Ohno is in Maou now, and you can’t be in the spotlight for long without getting mud slung at you eventually. God only knows when any of it actually happened, because Ohno’s not talking, and no one else wants to ask. 

And what Nino said to Sho was true, too—him and Ohno, it’s nothing, just casual sex, and Nino’s pretty sure they’ve all done that with each other over almost ten years. Just because he and Ohno do it more often doesn’t make it anything special. If it were special, Nino wouldn’t go through girlfriends like he does, and Ohno wouldn’t need to get high and bang random strangers and have it end up in the scandal rags.

If it were special, Ohno would have said something. Right?

This whole mess has nothing to do with Nino, he knows this, but still. It’s just one more thing stretching the distance between them, and there is a distance there, despite how close they always are to each other. 

He’s just so tired—of never talking about it, of pretending like he doesn’t care, of waiting so desperately for every _next time_. Every time he tells himself there won’t be another next time, but somehow he’s knocking on Ohno’s hotel room door, or letting Ohno in, drunk and giggly at 3am, and it just happens. It’s like a bad habit with them, they’ve said as much in public, even, though no one else really knew what they were talking about. But they always wake up in the morning with that uncertain space between them, and Nino is too afraid to reach across it and change the way things are, and the fact that Ohno has never tried to close the distance either should speak for itself.

Enough, then. No more next times.

Nino’s fingers still on the piano keys, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the sudden sting of tears. He hates crying, it’s pointless and messy and stupid. He doesn’t want to cry about this. A few tears escape despite his best efforts, and he drags his palms across his face to wipe them away.

Then something changes. It’s not a sound, not something he notices right away. Staring down at the faded ivory in front of him, Nino realizes: it’s the light. Dimmer, but just faintly. Someone standing in the door. At the same moment that Nino notices the difference, the person in the doorway moves into the room at a slow shuffle.

But Nino already knew it would be Ohno.

Ohno comes to stand close behind Nino, close enough that Nino only has to sit up straight to be leaning back against Ohno’s chest, which he does. It’s not really fair of him to be like this, pushing for Ohno’s support and affection when it’s Ohno who needs it. But he does it anyway, and Ohno’s hands come up to rest lightly against Nino’s shoulders.

“This isn’t fair,” Ohno says quietly, echoing Nino’s thought. “When it was you…”

“I know,” Nino replies. When it was Nino caught up in a scandal, Ohno never got upset, was nothing but supportive, even more acquiescing to Nino’s demands than usual. So why can’t Nino return the favor? 

“So,” Ohno continues, “so I think we need to…to stop.”

He sounds nervous, his sentence almost unfinished, but Nino understands. He had just been hoping that maybe Ohno wouldn’t come to the same conclusion quite so quickly. Maybe he could have a few more hours, a few more moments, of this closeness. He tips his head back, almost at Ohno’s shoulder, just to feel the warm, strong line of Ohno’s chest all along the length of his spine. Then he curls forward again, back into his familiar slouch.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Let’s stop.”

But then:

“No,” Ohno says quickly, and Nino turns to look at him in confusion. “That’s not—I mean—”

Ohno lets out a frustrated sigh and moves around to sit straddling the piano bench, facing Nino. This is the first time all day Nino is really getting a good look at Ohno, and the older man’s face is hollow and pinched. He is already thin and pale from the stress of his drama, but a morning full of lectures from managers and executives has not helped. His hair, dyed back to its original black, only highlights all this and right now Ohno’s eyes have something trembling and almost desperate in them.

“I’m not,” Ohno begins, mumbling, shifting his gaze down to his hands, “I’m not good at talking.”

There’s a pause, and Nino raises an eyebrow, completely baffled. “Try,” he suggests, because he has no idea where Ohno’s going with this.

Ohno sighs again, fiddles with the cuffs of the flannel shirt he’s got on over his t-shirt. When he finally speaks, his voice is so quiet Nino can barely hear him, even from only inches away.

“I just—I want to stop pretending like we’re, like _this_ ,” and he makes a vague gesture between himself and Nino, “doesn’t mean anything.”

“This,” Nino repeats uncertainly, after a few careful breaths. He feels tense, suddenly, afraid to move, like he’s balanced on the edge of something. He’s not sure if he’s trying to stay where he is, or if he’s waiting for a push.

“This…thing,” Ohno says, looking up at Nino. “Us.”

Still, Nino stares dumbly. He understands, he knows what Ohno must mean, but he can’t let himself believe it—not after all this time, not after he just decided he was finally going to let go.

“But,” is what Nino finally comes up with, although anything else he might have said gets stuck in his throat. There’s a strange lump there, a tangle of questions that won’t let any other words past— _Why are you telling me this now? Why not years ago? What_ does _this mean, if it’s something instead of nothing?_

Ohno watches Nino for a few moments longer, then squeezes his eyes shut and runs his hands through his hair, seemingly at a loss.

“Sorry,” he says eventually, “sorry that I never—I just—you said it was just sex, and I was afraid that if I ever…if I said anything, I thought you might—but if you’re this mad about the article, then…”

Ohno glances up for some kind of confirmation, but Nino is still frozen in shock. When Nino doesn’t respond, Ohno leans his forehead down against Nino’s shoulder—gently, carefully, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed.

“So,” he continues quietly, “so let’s just stop, okay? I know it’ll be hard, and you don’t like doing hard things, but if…if we stop pretending, then you wouldn’t have to be mad, because you’d know how much I…”

Ohno doesn’t even say it, but Nino feels all the breath leave him in a rush, because Ohno’s as good as confessed. He doesn’t know what do about it, though, because this is nothing like any of the dozens of scenarios he’s imagined.

“Please say something,” Ohno murmurs, and Nino’s eyes widen at the tremor in the other man’s voice. “If you don’t feel the same, that’s fine, I’ll go away, but—but if you do, please tell me, because I just—I need…”

As Nino watches, he sees something at the corner of Ohno’s eye catch the light from the open door. It trembles there for a moment, rolls down Ohno’s nose then falls to hit the bench between them with a tiny tapping noise. When he looks down, there is a little wet spot on the wood.

A tear. Ohno is _crying_.

Nino’s stalled brain jump-starts violently, carrying him at light-speed past the part where this is all his fault and how they could have been together properly years ago if they hadn’t both been afraid of asking, right up to now when he’s _made Ohno cry_.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Nino says, turning to face Ohno and taking the other man’s face in his hands and swiping at the tears with his thumbs. “Stop, stop, don’t do that! Why are you crying?”

“I’m having kind of a bad day,” Ohno says, his voice muffled by the way Nino’s hands are squishing his cheeks up. Ohno looks completely pathetic—lips quivering, eyes red. He sniffles a little, and something in Nino snaps, he just loses it.

He bursts out laughing.

Ohno only has a moment to stare at Nino in watery-eyed confusion before Nino wraps his arms and legs around Ohno and pulls the other man as close as he can, pressing his face into Ohno’s neck.

“Sorry,” Nino says, giggly and maybe a little confused himself. “I’m not laughing at you, really, I’m just…” He shivers a bit, feeling Ohno’s arms coming up around his back hesitantly. “Would you think I was a jerk if I said I was happy?”

“No,” Ohno answers, his voice just as hesitant as his hands. “But…so, you—”

“Love you,” Nino says right against Ohno’s ear. “I love you, Oh-chan.”

Ohno’s arms go suffocatingly tight around Nino’s ribs all of a sudden, and Nino can feel a wet spot forming on his shoulder where Ohno has buried his face, but he just rubs Ohno’s back and murmurs soft apologies and comforting words. It’s so strange, now that he’s said it, to realize how easy it was. And Ohno knows somehow, in the way they have always had of understanding each other, that this is different from when they joke around on-screen about how in love they are. And Nino realizes somehow, on top of all the other revelations that have struck him in the last few minutes, that maybe, for Ohno, it was never a joke.

“Let’s start over,” Nino says eventually. “There’s still time, right? To do this properly.”

Ohno nods against Nino’s shoulder, sniffles again and wipes at his face with the cuff of his shirt without letting go of Nino.

“Can we start right now?” Ohno asks.

“Right now?” Nino says, turning his head curiously, and Ohno is already there, reaching one hand up to cup Nino’s face and bring their mouths together.

Nino gives a startled gasp, feels a jolt in his gut. It is like starting over, like everything is new again, because they have never really done this despite all the times they have slept together. Ohno kisses him slowly, deliberately, like he is trying to make up for all the too fast, too careless kisses. Ohno’s hand slides around to the back of Nino’s neck, fingers carding through the short hairs there. Nino’s breath goes out again in a soft sigh, and he lets himself relax into Ohno, into the kiss, eventually parting his lips and inviting everything Ohno is offering him.

When they finally pull away, Ohno just buries his face against Nino’s neck again and lets his arms fall in a loose circle at Nino’s waist.

“That,” he says, faint and muffled, “that was what I needed.”

Nino gives a soft chuckle, running his hands over Ohno’s back thoughtfully. They are just quiet for a time, and Nino listens to their mingling breaths and overlapping heartbeats. His eyebrows furrow slightly.

“You’ve got filming soon, don’t you?”

Ohno makes a displeased grunt.

“You better go,” Nino insists. When Ohno sits up, looking a bit worried, like maybe he thinks Nino is having second thoughts, Nino just smiles and reaches out to pointlessly straighten Ohno’s collar. “Not that I want you to. I just don’t want you to get fired.”

“Yeah,” Ohno agrees, although he makes no move to leave.

“We’ll talk later,” Nino says, like a promise. “We’ll talk this time. I don’t want anymore…misunderstandings.”

“Yeah,” Ohno says again, with a little sheepish smile.

They can’t resist a few more kisses before Ohno finally does leave to go to his location shoot. Nino watches him go and doesn’t follow immediately. Instead, he turns back to the piano. But this time, he does not play. 

He stares down at the keys for a few long moments, fighting a ridiculous smile, then closes the cover softly.


End file.
